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It’s not every day, or every year, that a lawyer wins the Pulitzer Prize. The prize is known mostly for awarding excellence in journalism, although it also goes to winners in letters, the arts, and special categories. Rapper Kendrick Lamar, for example, won a Pulitzer this year for an album. Yale law professor James Forman Jr. won the prize for something less lyrical: his book about mass incarceration of blacks in America....

If you’re worried about law school debt, you should be. If you attend law school, you may or may not end up with your dream job, but you will certainly end up with a monstrous pile of debt. The good news is that there are still schools out there that are graduating JDs without drowning them in loans. A new list from US News reports features the law schools you may want to consider....

Apparently, you don’t need to be an inmate to find yourself incarcerated in San Diego. And this is not a one-time problem, either. It’s one of those ongoing-type issues in San Diego. A California lawyer was left in a waiting room at a San Diego jail, after guards forgot about him, according to NBC News. He waited for half an hour in the waiting room and even tried to use the intercom....

Depending on your religious beliefs, you probably have a very specific view of “heaven.” But most likely your version of heaven includes this: no taxes. That’s why Florida man Russell Gentile, 40, claimed he didn’t have to pay Uncle Sam. Why? Because he lives in heaven. And the IRS has no jurisdiction over heaven. Which is true. Unfortunately for Gentile, the IRS didn’t exactly buy his argument. He lives in Florida, after all....

Recently, Mark Hunt, the mixed martial arts fighter that made it to FindLaw’s Tarnished Twenty after threatening to personally sue his UFC opponents that cheat, has filed a lawsuit against Brock Lesnar and the whole UFC. Hunt is alleging that UFC and Lesnar conspired together, and not just that the league was simply negligent in not expediting Lesnar’s drug tests. Hunt, who lost his match against Lesnar last year, attempted to work out some sort of settlement with the UFC when it was discovered that Lesnar had used performance enhancing drugs and had failed two pre-fight drug tests....

In Target Corp. v. US, No. 09-1518, the Federal Circuit faced a challenge to the Court of International Trade’s affirmance of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s final affirmative circumvention determination that petroleum wax candles with 50% or more vegetable wax are later-developed merchandise covered by the anti-dumping duty order on petroleum wax candles from China. In affirming, the court held that the Commerce’s reasonable interpretation of the relevant Congressional statute is entitled to Chevron deference and it’s determination rested on substantial evidence....

With only a few months left until the end of his first term, President Barack Obama isn’t wasting any time. On Monday, he nominated Caitlin Halligan and Sri Srinivasan for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, reports The New York Times. Both candidates are high-profile so we’ll be covering this story very closely. Halligan is the general counsel of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Srinivasan is the Principal Deputy Solicitor General....

Some high schools take football seriously, but seriously enough to get an actual judge involved? Oklahoma City’s Douglass High School Trojans claim that they would have prevailed over the Locust Grove Pirates were it not for a bad call made one minute before the game’s end. After appealing to the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) for a replay of the game, Douglass asked a judge to review the disputed call, reports CBS Radio....

There’s an Antonin Scalia Law School now, but it won’t be home to the late justice’s papers. That honor goes to Harvard Law School, Scalia’s alma mater. The school announced the acquisition yesterday. Scalia’s files include his judicial papers from his time on the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit, as well as correspondence, speeches, documents from his work at the DOJ and even in academia – and probably a few doodles in the margins of the Federalist Papers as well....

If you don’t want to find yourself on the short end of an easy lawyer joke, actively seek opportunities to train under licensed attorneys before representing your first client. You can start by scoping out your legal backyard. Law school. Continuing our trend of “Top 10” for “2010”…this one comes straight from the course catalogues of law schools across the country. The law school clinic. Make it happen. Here’s why:...

National headlines are spreading like wildfire about the new Department of Justice policy shift to investigate and go after “discriminatory” affirmative action policies at universities. Critics are suggesting that the new policy is an overt attempt to protect white individuals from discriminatory affirmative action policies and institutions that go too far in exercising affirmative action. This is according to an unnamed U.S. government official cited by the Washington Post. On its face, the policy seems to be neutral in regards to which race(s) it seeks to protect, but the unnamed source really puts that in question....

A Michigan woman got charged with four crimes, and she can’t even remember what happened. Let’s see if we can refresh her memory. At around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, Jessie Schwaub-Devault was arrested after driving the wrong way while intoxicated. She led police on a five-mile chase before jumping out of her SUV and running. When police caught up with her, they were surprised to find that she was naked! Oh yeah, before the chase, she left her husband and child, also both naked, stranded at the roadside reststop....

“Iron Man” jet packs are making a big splash in Hawaii – literally and figuratively. But they’re also raising some potential legal concerns. How do they work? Basically, you strap on a jet pack that propels you through the air via pumped water. It’s fun, potentially dangerous, and possibly harmful to the environment. But who cares if you look like a dolphin on steroids, right? Well, Hawaiian officials don’t agree. Here’s the low-down on the jet packs and why they may soon come under heavy regulation:...

Who is more stupid – the student who takes a gun to school, or the one who posts a video of it on social media? In this case, that would be the same kid. Fortunately for him, police confiscated the weapon and he became a ward of the court and not a statistic in People v. K.J. Meanwhile, his attorney argued that the police searched the boy without reasonable suspicion. So, who is more stupid…?...

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Well, only for 30 days after an event in Washington, D.C. That’s the gist of a ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after two activist groups claimed the district’s sign law violated the First Amendment. The ordinance allows signs to be posted on lampposts for up to 180 days, except that event signs must be removed at least 30 days after an event....

Just because you look like Ernest Hemingway, don’t mean you act like Hemingway, at least that’s what a Florida judge said. Attorney Frank Louderback is representing Jerry Alan Bottorff in a capital defense murder trial. Bottorff is accused of murder for hire and could face the death penalty if convicted. Pretty serious stuff. But Louderback had other things on his mind in addition to the life of his client. In fact, he had Ernest Hemingway on his mind, as Lourderback was scheduled to compete in the semifinals of a Ernest Hemingway lookalike contest in Key West....

911, what’s your emergency? “Please help me! I’m in trouble!” What’s wrong sir, are you hurt? “No, my iPhone isn’t working!” This might sound like a bad joke, but it’s not. With a little bit of imagination, this is the dialogue that may have transpired between Illinois man Michael Alan Skopec, 48, and the emergency operators he called. Skopec allegedly dialed the 911 line five times to complain about his broken Apple smartphone....

Judicial precedent is one of the foundations of the American legal system. That’s why law students spend years reading old cases, why you pass hours researching past opinions on Westlaw, why you search for ways to apply or differentiate cases. Understanding precedent, and the role it plays in the law, is key to becoming a good lawyer. Yet, the doctrine of precedent is rarely addressed directly and systematically in law school curriculum....

The California Supreme Court ruled today that employers must make meal breaks available, but they don’t have to force wage workers to take a break for a meal. The decision resolves the nine-year-old Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court of San Diego lawsuit. The plaintiffs in the case argued that Brinker, which owns restaurants like Chili’s Grill & Bar and Maggiano’s Little Italy, failed to provide employees the breaks, or premium wages in lieu of breaks, that they were guaranteed by law....

You can be arrested for breaking into your own home but it is unlikely that you will be charged or that the charges will stick. It may be that neighbors spot you jimmying a lock, don’t recognize you, and call the cops. Or maybe a patrol car is driving by and wonders why you’re crawling through the front window. Whatever the case, you should be able to avoid arrest by explaining who you are and showing some proof you live in the place....